I discovered this morning that Google isseems to be cloaking results for some users based on either your browser ID user agent or possibly based on the extensions you are running in Firefox.

Like many search marketers, I frequently use Google custom queries. By far, the most common query I use is the site: command which shows the pages from a particular domain or folder within a domain. While preparing for SMX next week, I have been researching the effect of pagination and trying to demonstrate whether or not paginated pages are in the index.

When I run this search using Firefox, I get the following results:Site command with Firefox

When I repeat this query on Chrome, I see VERY different results. So, it looks like Google is cloaking results for Firefox Users.

Update: 11:11 AM: The is some debate about whether changing content based on a browser user agent detection is really cloaking. I may be mixing my euphemisms, but I wouldn’t want to be making that distinction in a Google re-inclusion request. The impact of this is on regular users is slight virtually non-existent, but it looks like if this is not an isolated bug, professional SEO’s are going to have to start using Chrome on occasion (the good news is that Safari seems unaffected). If anyone wants to test this with a clean version of Firefox that doesn’t have any SEO extensions, let me know what you get. Maybe this is only because I have the SEOBook Toolbar and/or SEO For Firefox installed.

Update 2:01 PM: Commenters are reporting that some people confirm my results while others are seeing the same thing in FireFox and Chrome. This leads to an open debate about whether they are “personalizing” Site: results, showing different results based on IP/browse history, etc., or just screwing with me because I am a “known” SEO.

Updated 3/3/10: Confirmed that this is not a personalization issue with Byran Hordling, lead engineer on Google Personalization.

Update: 2/27/10, 1:30 PM. Michael VanDeMar pointed out that the pagination pages are being excluded by the Robots.txt. This explains the lack of metadata being shown, but does nothing to address why Chrome & Safari show different results from IE.

From the opening note, the music is the star of Cirque Du Soleil’s LOVE. The Beatles provided the soundtrack in my childhood and words fail to describe the amazing soundscape lovingly created by Sir George Martin and his son Giles Martin in the Abby Road Studio. The music erupts through a breath taking custom sound system designed by Jonathan Deans that engulfs the audience in a way Paul, George, John and Ringo could never have imagined; notes leap into the air through 6,341 speakers, including three per individual seat with a stereo pair built into the headrest.

The Love Theater at the Mirage, like all Cirque shows in Vegas, features an incredible stage that is integral to the show. This one has nine lifts, eight automated tracks and trolleys that allows seamless transitions between sets along with chain motors built into the ceiling that allows incredible, gravity defying maneuvers and reverse bungy jumping, enabling performers to fly upward and spin through the air. The stage faces all directions, nullifying the usual orientation of “front” and “back.” 2,013 seats set around a central stage in eight sections; there isn’t a bad seat in the house.

The circus performance is more ephemeral and harder to describe. The choreography guiding the myriad movement and visual images is both entertaining and overwhelming, continually enchanting the audience as they stare at whatever piece of the tapestry caught your attention.

The storyline seems loosely intended to trace the rise of the Beatles from their days in Hamburg to their emergence into super stardom, then on to their breakup in the 70’s. Along the way, we see England emerging from World War II and allusions to the psychedelics and politics, the war and cultural revolution that were the cultural milieu of the Beatles era. These moments are communicated primarily through colorful costumes, iconic symbols and fictitious characters like Sargent Pepper, Lucy in the Sky, Eleanor Rigby, Lady Madonna and Mr. Kite.

The show itself represents a “reunion,” if bittersweet, as it seeks some form of closure for a story that so tragically lacks a happy ending. The support and unreserved enthusiasm for the project by the surviving band members, the families of the departed, along with the dedication and devotion of the Martins provides some closure and makes the goal of a happy ending almost obtainable. As Sir George Martin told the BBC,

“It was strange, writing this for an old friend who was no longer with us. Yesterday was first score I ever wrote for a Beatle song way back in 1965 and this, 41 years later, is the last. They bookend an extraordinary time…I never thought I would get this deeply involved with the Beatles again. It’s been a real journey but we were doing something worthwhile.” He, continued, “We were trying to create a feeling of what the Beatles were all about, and what they were all about was love.”

Thanks to the hard work of Martin, McCartney and the Cirque creative wizardry, the audience gets to be deeply involved with the Fab Four again, if only for a few fleeting hours. Don’t miss your chance to feel the LOVE again.

While sitting around at Pubcon chewing the fat ( a marvelous Rib Eye) with a couple of very, very smart people who shall remain nameless, the subject of the emerging war between Apple and Google came up. Specifically, we were discussing the one box music search and the notable absense of iTunes from the choices for to buy digital content from Google’s new music player in the SERP.

After we agreed that cloud based DRM has certain advantages for users and lamented that Apple was unlikely to counter by licensing iTunes for Palm, Droid, RIM or Symbian (too bad because it would be a pretty shrewd move to counter Google and put a lot of pressure on everyone to make DRM purchases portable across platform), we got to discussing monetization of the OneBox and what a slippery slope that represesented.

Ultimately the conversation turned to MySpace and how it was trying to find its way back to its “roots” as a community for music and bands. Suddenly, it struck me that Apple needs to buy MySpace. Before you say I am crazy, hear me out:

NewsCorp is getting hammered lately and bleeding cash, including over $1 million/month in vacant office space for MySpace alone. Selling MySpace certainly wouldn’t get anything like the $15 billion dollar valuation that was once being bandied about, but even $2.5 billion would be a nice cash infusion along with a huge profit versus the $580 million acquisition price.

Apple has something like $35 billion in the bank and billions more coming in every quarter. There are not a lot of attractive acquisitions for Apple that really provide “synergy”, they aren’t likely to start paying a dividend and they have no reason to consider a huge stock buy back. Apple has never made major acquisition and frankly it isn’t clear what technology company they would want to buy except perhaps Garmin or some other source of turn-by-turn data to counter Google. All that cash is just balance sheet bling.

MySpace has lost its mojo and is in desperate need of being cool, hip and relevant again. Apple would immediately polish that turd and erase the stench from the idea that Fox New and MySpace are owned by the same company, a definite issue for many hipsters and “Hollywood Elites”

Integrating with iTunes would instantly make all that music content, fan data and miscellaneous comments relevant, compelling and even VALUABLE and possibly even generate revenue by connecting directly to iTunes titles.

The worst kept secret in the valley is that Apple is trying to become a player in streaming media to compete with the cable companies and possibly YouTube in the battle for the living room. MySpace is well connected in Hollywood and could provide many of the same synergies for iTunes play to move from the laptop to the living room.

Apple is known for amazing industrial design, clean, intuitive user interface and MySpace… uhm… MySpace could use some of that.

MySpace is heavily invested in geo, so it has a nice foundation for a local play and provides some synergies for potential iPhone GPS based services that are currently powered by Google.

Finally, MySpace is STILL a fairly major online destination. Convert iTunes visitors into web traffic and the combined entity is suddenly one of the top 5 web destinations with an enormous user base which is large enough to slug it out with the other platform players. Short of making a play for Yahoo, MySpace is the only property that could allow Apple to jump off the sidelines and compete on the social front.

If anyone at Apple is listening, now is the time to act, before MySpace either finds its way or becomes irrelevant. You may not be able to get into the Google OneBox, but if you play your cards right you could dominate the organic results for music, television and movies and bring users right to your door. And if you do decide to go for it, just send me 1% for putting the deal together.

Update: 02/15/2010

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta was unceremoniously fired last week after MySpace fell $32 million short of quarterly targets amid rumors on tension among the 3 top executives alone with some micromanagement from above, aka John Miller, head of News Corps Digital division. Add another round of layoffs since November and MySpace is probably available for a song… or 1.55 billion songs @1.29/each in a deal which does not officially disclose the purchase price.

Ever over-think a problem or make things too complicated? Work to hard to explain a concept and feel like you are losing half the audience?

For the last two years I have been struggling to communicate how it is crucial that site owners do the right thing by their users, even if that means forgoing short-term profits for long-term rewards. In this crusade, I coined the term Virtual Blight and have taken every opportunity to try to get people to listen to me. I have bashed Twitter for turning a blind eye to spam, I have presented at the Web 2.0 Expo and the Web 2.0 Summit and I have probably alienated more than a few colleagues along the way.

Last week, In his TechCrunch bombshell How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s ConfessionFacebook advertising guru Dennis Yu summed up the whole issue in a 10 words: Facebook will either clean things up or become a MySpace.

So, there you have it; Virtual Blight and two years of writing and speaking summed up in a sentence.

recent

Intent Focused SEM

SEO and Pay Per Click landing pages should almost always be designed with the same content and the same layout because search engines reward on-page and on-site factors by trying to emulate human users as they crawl the page and navigate the